The NF's Roundabout Route to Tripoli Revealed

This is how Searchlight reported the Griffin and Harrington trip to Libya in March 1989

In the last few weeks Searchlight investigators have been able to uncover the exclusive story of how three of the NF political soidier chiefs found themselves in Libya last September as guests of the Government.

In 1983 Derek Holland and Joe Pearce were negotiating with the London Libyan People's Bureau for assistance. But these negotiations came to an abrupt end when a killer firing from inside the building shot down policewoman Yvonne Fletcher in cold blood and wounded a number of Libyan exiles, who were demonstrating outside.

The ineptitude of Special Branch led to their failure to discover correspondence between Pearce and the Libyans when they raided Ian Anderson's old flat in Newham East London. Anderson and Pearce were later charged with publishing Bulldog in contravention of the Race Relations Act. Pearce went to prison but Anderson was acquitted.

The Italian terrorist exiles promised to put the NF in touch with friendly Arabs in France but this also seems to have foundered. Then a visit by NF chief Nick Griffin to Spain brought him into contact with Colonel Carlos Meer de Ribera's organisation, the Co-ordinating Group of Nationalist Forces. This looked a more likely route to the Libyan leader, as Ribera was in fact an agent of the Libyan regime enjoying the personal support of Gaddafi.

But again fate intervened. The.Spanish nazi was arrested and convicted of spying for; Libya and of using Libyan funds to finance various fascist groups attempting to destabilise the fragile democracy that had come to Spain after Franco's death.

Then on 19th January 1987 the political soldiers wrote to Robert Pash, leader of the National Vanguard and the Australian People's Congress, in Capalab, Queensland. It was clear from the letter that they were having no luck in reestablishing contact with the Libyans. But Pash was in a strong position to help them out.

In 1985 Pash had been exposed as a front man for the Libyans. A convert to Islam, he has tried to forge a link between the ultra right and the ultra left in Australia, to oppose the Jews and form an international union of white states. He was also involved with the distribution of Ku Klux Klan material in Australia. Stung by Pash's exposure, the Libyan representative in Australia tried to deny any connection with this third positionist crank.

But in reality Pash has gone on to be the man who fixes things for Colonel Gaddafi in Australia. When free trips are arranged for MPs, the press and other special guests, it is Pash who organises things. Among those who have enjoyed his arrangements are John Bennett, the Australian historical revisionist and associate of British historian David Irving and Willis Carlo in the United States.

Two months ago Pash was seen in Tripoli on the arm of the Libyan Foreign Minister who was not denying that Pash had arranged the NF chiefs' trip to his country.

From the political soldiers' letter in 1987, it was clear that they did not have access to Gaddafi's Green Book in the UK. But within a few months they had become sole distributors of the Green Book in Britain.

According to sources close to the Libyan Foreign Office the Libyans are looking for someone to write a book for the western market on the life and thoughts of Colonel Gaddafi and to re-write the Green Book in a style more understandable to western readers. We bet Harrington and Holland are sharpening up their quills.

Thanks to Gerry Gable at Searchlight